Kitt's Example Blog

A tour of England with…. Jane Austen


It’s hard to think of an author who has a more passionate army of devotees than Jane Austen – you only have to Google ‘Jane Austen society’ to find branches as far afield as Australia and Argentina, not to mention the large and extremely active North American version. And this is all the more amazing when you consider how narrow her own experience was: she never married, never worked, and never travelled more than 150 miles from where she was born.

“I have travelled so little, that every fresh place would be interesting to me”

Persuasion

And yet one of the reasons she still inspires so many readers, is the power her novels have to evoke the world she lived in. We can see it through her eyes, and go with her to its elegant assembly rooms, beautiful stately homes, busy villages, and fashionable towns. So why don’t we do just that? Grab your bonnets, girls, and take your seats in our virtual barouche for a pleasant promenade round Regency England.




Then, as now, London was the biggest city in England by far, and Jane Austen travelled there on more than one occasion, both as a young woman, and later in life, when she was a published (if still anonymous) author. During a visit in 1811 her letters mention visits to the British Gallery, as well as shopping for muslin and silk stockings, visiting the Lyceum theatre, walking in Kensington Gardens, and enjoying a musical party at her brother Henry’s house in Sloane Street, which was attended by no less than 66 people. It’s also interesting, now, to hear her talk of ‘walking to London’ from her brother’s house – Chelsea was still a village then – a far cry from the busy and fashionable residential and shopping district it is today.

"I cannot see that London has any great advantage over the country for my part, except the shops and public places”


Pride & Prejudice

Jane certainly seems to have enjoyed her visits to the capital, but she’s always very much aware that town customs and manners are not only more elegant than country ones, but rather more decadent too. You can hear an echo of this in Fanny Price’s belief that “the influence of London [was] very much at war with all respectable attachments”, and it’s significant that when things that go wrong in Mansfield Park, they go wrong in London. But even the scandalous elopement of Henry Crawford and Maria Rushworth was nothing compared to the really seamy underside of life in London at the time, where gentlemen every bit as distinguished as Austen’s own heroes indulged in gambling, hard drinking, and vice. Not that a respectable spinster like Jane would have known anything about that, of course….

"You are speaking of London, I am speaking of the nation at large. The metropolis, I imagine, is a pretty fair sample of the rest. Not, I should hope, of the proportion of virtue to vice throughout the kingdom.”

Mansfield Park

As it happens, Reading is the nearest large town to my own home – though it’s sadly changed from Jane Austen’s time. One place that is still recognisable, though, is the ruin of the old abbey, which was at one time the home of the Reading Ladies Boarding School. Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra were taught there briefly, between 1785 and 1786.



Many people see Austen’s apparent ambivalence reflected in the dramatically different views of Bath expressed by the heroines of her two ‘Bath novels’. When young Catherine Morland arrives in the city in Northanger Abbey, she is “all eager delight — her eyes were here, there, everywhere, as they approached its fine and striking environs, and afterwards drove through those streets which conducted them to the hotel. She was come to be happy, and she felt happy already.” By contrast, the much older Anne Elliott, in Persuasion, arrives in Bath “on a wet afternoon… amidst the dash of other carriages, the heavy rumble of carts and drays, the bawling of newspapermen, muffin-men and milkmen, and the ceaseless clink of pattens.”

“After a moment's pause he said: ‘Though I came only yesterday, I have equipped myself properly for Bath already, you see,’ (pointing to a new umbrella).”


Persuasion

At one point in Persuasion Anne and her sister and Mrs Clay are caught in the rain in Milsom Street, and dash for cover to Molland's. This was a real confectioners’ shop that Jane Austen herself no doubt visited. If you’re interested in seeing more of the real places in Bath that feature both in Jane’s life, and in her novels, the website http://www.pemberley.com/ has a wonderful map of the city, with all the references marked.

 
South now to Sidmouth, and for one very special reason. This charming seaside town doesn’t feature in any of the novels, but it did – perhaps – feature prominently in Jane’s own life.

This whole episode is very shadowy, partly because Cassandra Austen deliberately burned all the letters that related to it, but it’s said that in the summer of 1801, when she was 25, Jane Austen met and supposedly fell in love with a young clergyman while on holiday in Sidmouth. Three weeks later he told her he had to go away for a short while, and the next they heard he was dead. That’s all we know, and even that much is contested by some people. But what we do know is that Jane never married, so perhaps there’s something to it after all. Jane Gardam wrote an interesting short story based on this episode called The Sidmouth Letters, and it’s also covered in biographies like David Nokes’ excellent Jane Austen: A Life.



Along the coast next for a day or two in to Lyme Regis, which Jane Austen visited at least twice, and which features so famously in Persuasion. In fact we will copy exactly what the Uppercross party do, so and after “securing accommodations, and ordering a dinner at one of the inns… walk directly down to the sea”, for a stroll along the famous Cobb. It’s here that young Louisa Musgrove met her infamous accident - an incident referred to again by one of the characters in John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman, which is also set in Lyme.

“The country round Lyme is very fine. I walked and rode a great deal; and the more I saw, the more I found to admire.”


Persuasion

Jane Austen obviously loved the whole area, as this extract from Persuasion proves: “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better. The scenes in its neighbourhood, Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more, its sweet, retired bay, backed by dark cliffs, where fragments of low rock among the sands, make it the happiest spot … these places must be visited, and visited again, to make the worth of Lyme understood.”


We begin our return via the ancient cathedral city of Winchester. A sad destination this, for any Austen fan, for it was to College Street, Winchester that Jane moved in May 1817, to be treated for the illness that eventually killed her. It rained all the way there, but Jane still retained her sense of humour, joking that she had become a “very genteel, portable sort of invalid.”

It’s still not clear exactly what it was that she was suffering from: the traditional view is that it was probably Addison’s disease, a hormonal disorder, but more recent theories suggest it could have been tuberculosis. Whatever it was, she lasted barely two months in her final lodgings, and died on July 18th. She was only 41. She’s buried in the cathedral, which is only a few yards from the house where she died. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published at the end of the same year.




We end our trip at Chawton, which is probably the most famous and significant Austen location of them all. Jane lived in Chawton Cottage with her mother and sister and their friend Martha Lloyd from 1809, until her final removal to Winchester. After her father’s death, and a number of moves to different lodgings, Chawton was at last a stable and secure home, and it was during these eight years that Austen wrote Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion, and revised Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey. It’s a museum now, and a place of pilgrimage for Janeites all over the world. You can see manuscripts in her own hand, her writing desk, and even the little donkey cart she used to ride in to make the short trip into Alton for shopping.

The nearby Chawton House, once home to Jane’s brother Edward, is now a study centre for women’s writing, and I was lucky enough to give a talk about Murder at Mansfield Park there earlier this year. It was a glorious early summer day, and as we stood on the terrace looking out over a view that can hardly have changed in 200 years, it was as if the centuries had slipped away and we really were in Jane Austen’s England after all…


This has been a very quick tour, but if you’d like to find out more about the places that were important in Jane Austen’s life and works, I recommend this delightful Jane Austen Gazetteer.

Paperback Dolls wish to thank the charming and talented Lynn Shepherd for giving us an Austen tour of England. Learn more about Lynn Shepherd by visiting her Website.

Here’s a list of eight famous houses from Jane Austen’s novels. Can you match the house to the description?

Mansfield Park
Pemberley, in Pride & Prejudice
Sotherton, in Mansfield Park
Barton Cottage, in Sense & Sensibility
Northanger Abbey
The Great House, Uppercross, in Persuasion
Cleveland, in Sense & Sensibility
Donwell Abbey, in Emma

1.​ It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills;—and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance.

2.​ She …viewed the respectable size and style of the building, its suitable, becoming, characteristic situation, low and sheltered - its ample gardens stretching down to meadows washed by a stream…and its abundance of timber in rows and avenues…

3. ​[It] was a spacious, modern-built house, situated on a sloping lawn. It had no park, but the pleasure-grounds were tolerably extensive; and, like every other place of the same degree of importance, it had its open shrubbery, and closer wood walk; a road of smooth gravel, winding round a plantation, led to the front; the lawn was dotted over with timber; the house itself was under the guardianship of the fir, the mountain-ash, and the acacia…

4​. To [?] accordingly they went, to sit the full half hour in the old-fashioned square parlour, with a small carpet and shining floor, to which the present daughters of the house were gradually giving the proper air of confusion by a grand piano-forte and a harp, flower-stands and little tables placed in every direction.

5.​ The whole building enclosed a large court; and two sides of the quadrangle, rich in Gothic ornaments, stood forward for admiration. The remainder was shut off by knolls of old trees, or luxuriant plantations, and the steep woody hills rising behind, to give it shelter, were beautiful even in the leafless month of March.

6​. "…a spacious modern-built house, so well placed and well screened as to deserve to be in any collection of engravings of gentlemen seats in the kingdom…"

7.​ The situation of the house was good. High hills rose immediately behind, and at no great distance on each side; some of which were open downs, the others cultivated and woody. The village … was chiefly on one of these hills, and formed a pleasant view …. The prospect in front was more extensive; it commanded the whole of the valley, and reached into the country beyond.

8. ​“… a large, regular, brick building—heavy, but respectable looking, and has many good rooms. It is ill placed. It stands in one of the lowest spots of the park; in that respect, unfavourable for improvement. But the woods are fine, and there is a stream, which, I dare say, might be made a good deal of.”

How well do you know Jane Austen? Answer the questions to the quiz in the comment section below and you will be entered into the Jane Austen giveaway featuring: